Bill Cunningham: Facades
Legendary fashion photographer Bill Cunningham’s project ‘Facades’ documents the architectural riches and fashion history of New York.
Beginning in 1968, Cunningham scoured the city’s thrift stores, auctions and street fairs for vintage clothing and scouted architectural sites on his bicycle. The result was a photographic essay entitled Facades (completed in 1976) that paired models posed in period costumes at historic New York settings. Over the eight years, Bill Cunningham collected more than 500 outfits and photographed more than 1,800 locations for the project, jotting down historical commentary on the versos of each print.
The project is to be exhibited at the New York Historical Society, offering a unique perspective on both the city’s distant past and the particular time in which the images were created. Cunningham’s project is examined as part of the larger cultural zeitgeist in late 1960s-70s New York, an era when historic preservation and urban issues loomed large.
A selection of 80 images on view will evoke Cunningham’s pride for the city he called home. His photographs will be contextualised with reproductions of original architectural drawings from the New York Historical Society’s collection.
‘Bill Cunningham: Facades’ is on view from Friday 14 through Sunday 15 June 2014 at the New York Historical Society, New York.
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